AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Time now for your letters. First, many of you wrote in when you heard this unusual word...
GERSINE BULLOCK-PRADO: Zwetschgendatschi.
CORNISH: A Bavarian word for plum cake. We featured the German dessert on the program and Henry Goetze of Edwards, Colorado writes to tell us: Wow. I never thought that I would hear the word Zwetschgendatschi uttered on the radio. My mom was Czech and German and used to make this pie during the summer months. He continues: I could sit down and finish a whole pie in one sitting. I asked her for the recipe long before she passed away, but she did not have it written down. So she told me ein bisschen of this, und zom dings. Well, you get it, a very inexact recipe. It has haunted us ever since. No one can make it the way Oma made it, and we all think she intended it that way.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
Well, you can find our version of that recipe at npr.org. And speaking of food, all summer we've been bringing you tales from the global grill. And this week, our London correspondent Philip Reeves aired some grievances about certain fellow partygoers getting all up in his grill. You know, the guy who just has to get involved in the barbequing. Phil calls him the interloper.
PHILIP REEVES, BYLINE: It's as if he's drawn to your grill by the primal tug of meat and fire. You see him from the corner of your eye. The interloper is scrutinizing your sausages.
BLOCK: Well, Jerrold Richards of Lyle, Washington offers several possibilities to keep the interloper at bay. He writes: Taser, bear spray, for most all it takes is a gentle whisper in their ear that they must put down the grill tools and step back from the grill or die. Really, just the minimum necessary assertiveness, firearms are almost never necessary.
CORNISH: And Greg Lanz of Tucson, Arizona has some advice for Phil Reeves. He says: As Mr. Reeves should well know, no self-respecting interloper would ever turn a sausage with a fork. That would let the savory juices release and make for dry fare. Keep the neophytes away by equipping yourself only with spatula and tongs. Better yet, take the tools with you when you depart for a beer.
BLOCK: And finally, your letters about melancholy baboons. In the Netherlands last week, a group of 112 baboons at the Emmen Zoo stopped eating and became unusually quiet. Why remains a mystery. Some of the ideas that were floated, perhaps their cave was invaded by snakes or they saw some aliens.
CORNISH: Not surprisingly, many of you sent in suggestions of your own. Chris Schwader of Vermillion, Ohio, proposes "Duck Dynasty" was in reruns.
BLOCK: John Campion of Wilmington, Delaware, asks: Could it simply have been that the baboons were experiencing yet another Monday?
CORNISH: Thanks for your comments and more our way at npr.org. Just click on Contact Us.
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BLOCK: ALL THINGS CONSIDERED continues in a moment. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.